Tim Townsend has practised as a property lawyer since 2000, assisting hundreds of clients in commercial and residential property transactions.

You can call Tim on 01227 813414.

Tim’s commercial experience includes advising clients with the purchase, sale and commercial letting of shops, offices, industrial units, land for development and agricultural property. Tim has several clients who have commercial and mixed property portfolios for letting and has also advised on the sale and purchase of small businesses.

Tim’s areas of commercial property expertise include:

• Buying and selling freehold and leasehold land
• Sales of business as a going concern
• Conditional contracts
• Option agreements
• Pre-emption agreements
• Overage agreements
• Promotion agreements
• Secured lending
• Commercial leases, renewals, assignments and extensions acting for landlords and tenants
• Agreement for leases subject to conditions such as planning or building works
• Licence agreements, to occupy and to alter commercial premises, and
• Title issues, covenants, rectification.

Clients are also welcome to seek Tim’s assistance with buying and selling flats and houses, mortgages, deeds of variation of rights and covenants, equity release, and lease extensions.

Tim qualified as a solicitor and joined what was then Gardner and Croft in 1984, having graduated with an LLB from Cardiff University three years previously.

For several years after qualifying, Tim was an advocate in the magistrates’ and Crown Courts in Kent and represented road haulage clients at public inquiries. Tim was managing partner of Gardner Croft LLP and, after the merger with Boys & Maughan, continued to manage our office in Castle Street, Canterbury, before moving to our St George’s Place office in February 2024 to work alongside our other commercial property specialists.

Tim is a member of The Law Society Property Section and regularly attends courses and seminars so he can keep up to date with the areas in which he practises. Tim is also a member of the Kent Law Society.

Reflecting his considerable experience, Tim’s expertise is often sought by clients who require advice in more complex or unusual areas of law. For example, with advances in mapping techniques (using GPS) over the last 20 years or so, clients are increasingly finding themselves in situations where the position of the boundaries on the ground are not reflected in the Land Registry records. Most often this involves the need to make an application for ownership of unregistered land. Recently, however, Tim had the unusual task of sorting out a situation where parcels of farmland were registered in two separate titles at the same time. With the help of the Land Registry and Tim’s clients’ neighbouring landowners, Tim managed to resolve the situation to his client's satisfaction.

Tim wants our clients to feel that they have achieved what they set out to achieve, that they have received value for money from our staff and that we have been an invaluable help to them during the process.

Outside the office, Tim spends time racing sailboats; everything from dinghies to cruiser-racers at home and abroad. He is also involved in race management with his sailing club and with Kent Schools Sailing Association. Tim is vice president of Canterbury Hockey Club and a long-term supporter of Canterbury Junior Hockey Club. Tim sings (once a year) with a local Choral Society and is a governor of a local school.